EK were the second operator of the A380 and , especially with the very slow delivery rate, will pay a price for that in terms of reliability. The 777 was well proven and bugs removed before arriving in the fleet. The early 380s bugs will be sorted even if it is a slow process because of the relatively small and slow growing fleets.
The A 380 has its niche- and one which will grow. It is heavy for its size primarily because it is actually too small, the heavy wing and central structure being capable of supporting a much bigger/longer aircraft. The initial version is much as a 747SP to a 747. The recession will be tailing off in a year or two,- three at the most,- and the need for the bigger aircraft (which both Emirates and Cathay have said they want) will re-emerge and with the stretch its seat/mile costs will improve enormously. Even now it is the cheapest way in terms of aircraft mile cost to carry the difference between its capacity and that of a 777-300LR.
Many of the previous posts under this heading seem to be based on the long running Boeing good, Airbus bad battle and vice versa of course. The 777 is good and it will remain the very useful and versatile aircraft it is for a long time. The 787 on the other hand in its present form, apart from its production difficulties ,may well turn out to be too small at its midlife point as it offers much the same capacity as the 767-300 which was already suffering this problem with many carriers. The midlife point, not the date of introduction, is the oneto keep your eye on in figuring out the revenue/profit contribution of any aircraft over its life with a company. Emirates and others have for some time been urging a stretch , but Boeing, flush with orders and suffering 24/27 month delivery delays want to maximise return on the existing models and also delay a stretched 787 eating into 777 orders as naturally they want to maximise the return on that project. In doing so they risk losing the early market to the A 350 but at the moment they seem willing to take that risk in the interests of shorter term profitability. Presumably their financial people will have worked out exactly when they have to bite the bullet or do something else for the 350 seat market.